The process of service

January 21, 2015

Successful businesses are disciplined in following simple and repeatable processes that achieve their goals. Just Hope’s Guiding Principle of utilizing good business practices includes an established process for our service efforts from beginning to end. It is this process and our commitment to it which enables our project team to effectively utilize the money our donors entrust to us. Expanding Just Hope’s support base and expanding our service capacity are the bookends of our business, and in between is the critical process that ties them together to achieve our mission of making an ‘impact that lasts.’

Here’s a brief overview of that process:

1. ASSESSMENT
Purpose: Understanding
In the assessment phase, we seek the answers to countless questions about a potential project – questions about the people, local culture and history, constraints and obstacles, existing resources and assets, local climate and weather patterns, area politics, potential opportunities, legal environment, logistical challenges – we seek to leave no stone unturned in order to gain understanding.

2. PLANNING
Purpose: Response
If the assessment phase indicates that legitimate needs and a working environment exist, we will respond by developing a detailed plan for empowering people willing to do their part. The plan includes how we will work through local people to connect their interests and motivations with our resources, with an eye toward ultimately playing less and less of a role in people’s ongoing efforts to provide for themselves.

3. EXECUTION
Purpose: Empowerment
With a solid plan in place (but with the understanding that the plan must be flexible to adjust to changes along the way), we work the plan, constantly keeping watch on the overall process and Guiding Principles. Are we recalling what we learned in the assessment? Are we fulfilling our promise to empower people? Are we keeping the exit strategy in mind?

4. EXIT
Purpose: Independence
The final and most critical stage of our process is the part where we release the opportunity and management of it to the local people. God willing, we will have been invited into a community, worked alongside people in need and utilized donor resources in such a way to help hard-working people facing very difficult circumstances change the course of their family’s life for generations to come – ‘impact that lasts.’

The coming year will bring many new and exciting projects. Our pledge is to honor the process as a means of addressing poverty in the way that we firmly believe is the best path to a cure.